


String Theory

by kat8cha



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 06:05:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5405786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat8cha/pseuds/kat8cha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Coulson finds romance when Peggy Carter becomes a woman out of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	String Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CeliaEquus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeliaEquus/gifts).



> Happy Holidays CeliaEquus!

“Howard, do not-”

There is a bolt of light (blue, of course) and Peggy is forced to blink stars out of her eyes.   
She loves Howard, she does, but one of these days she is going to kill him. That does, however, depend on him not blowing himself up and no one else getting there first. She scowled and brushed off her suit…

Her hands met bare skin.

She blinked repeatedly and slowly the sparks disappeared. She was standing in the basement lab that she and Howard had just been working in but it was empty. No tables, no Howard, and she certainly had no clothes. She was most baffled by the lack of clothes. If Howard tinkering with that damned cube had vaporized everyone surely it would have vaporized her with her clothes. If this was the afterlife she would be damned if she was spending it nude. 

Perhaps Howard had just managed to create a brilliant new weapon.

Well, clearly he had.

Teleportation, perhaps?

She turned slowly and took account of everything in the room.

“Bricks.” she said with a sigh, she walked across the concrete floor and tapped on the bricks with her finger nail. Even her varnish had vanished. “Bricks and…” she scratched, “shoddy mortar.” 

Well, obviously not heaven then. Heaven would have better craftsmanship. Hell? Well, she’d have to see.

There was a door, she was delighted to note, and when she walked over towards it and tried the handle she was equally delighted (perhaps she had even entered the state of being elated) to find it was unlocked and swung inwards. She peered out into the hallway. It certainly looked like the hallway she had used to enter Howard’s lab. A bit cleaner, perhaps, but the science experiment that had vaporized her nail polish and clothes could have done away with the dust as well. There wasn’t anyone in the hallway and so Peggy stepped out.

She hoped to find an untouched closet soon. Perhaps she would nip into Howard’s office and steal a labcoat, as she didn’t trust any of the feminine articles of clothing Howard’s admirers had left behind. She trod carefully down the hallway. Under any other circumstances she would have strode, acting like you know where you were going was the surest way of passing unnoticed, but her nudity had made her a bit more cautious. She didn’t, after all, want to run tits first into Howard himself only to have the man exclaim ‘Eureka! It worked!’

A nudity ray sounded right up his alley.

“…”

Was that… she tipped her head. Yes. Further down the hallway there was definitely talking going on.   
Well, good, Hell wasn’t totally empty after all. She tried every door she passed but either they were locked or as empty as the room she had been in. She frowned, however, when she opened the door of a room she knew had once been full of Howard’s old junk and was now empty. The door used to squeak. It had, in fact, squeaked earlier that day when Peggy had opened it to make a point to Howard. Had he gotten it oiled while they were experimenting? That didn’t seem at all like him.

She was nearing the end of the hallway.

The voices were closer.

She could make out snippets of words now. The voices did not sound familiar but then, she couldn’t say she knew everyone in the facility.

She stepped just behind the final door of the hallway and waited.

“Here, Mack, hold this too.” A female voice said, she sounded authoritative. 

“I’m already carrying two boxes.” Mack complained. He had a lovely deep voice. “You seriously can’t pull your own weight, Bobbi?”

“You’re carrying Simmons’ box.” They had passed the hallway and continued. Peggy inched out and peered carefully one way then the other. No one else in the hall, ‘Bobbi’ and ‘Mack’ had continued on their path. “Are you saying you like her better than me?”

Mack sighed. His broad shoulders rose and fell with the force of it. “Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.” 

Peggy frowned. Neither Bobbi no Mack looked familiar to her. There was more. The lighting in the hallway, now that she looked at it, had definitely been updated. Wiring that hadn’t been installed prior to this morning was now strung along the ceiling. Mack and Bobbi wore unfamiliar clothes, although the basics of pants and a shirt were not foreign to Peggy she had never seen a woman wear denim outside of a factory. Her pants were tighter than any Peggy had ever seen as well.

Well, new fashions… happened. Peggy supposed. She frowned and carefully trailed Mack and Bobbi down the hall once they had turned a corner. The enhanced lighting in the hall made her far too aware of just how naked she was.

Which was, as a reminder, completely.

More voices had been added to the mix now. At least two new women and one man. There was background noise as well, the sound of movement, footsteps. Peggy sighed as she edged towards a corner. It sounded busy and she was still naked.

Well.

Best to grab the bull by the horns, then, right?

She stepped into full view of the hallway. Bobbi, Mack, and a shorter woman with short hair had their backs to her, an older woman spotted her and turned, a man of the same age also saw her and his eyes widened comically. “Excuse me.” She said. She came to a stop when the younger woman turned and reached for what might have been a weapon. “I seem to have lost my clothes.”  
She smiled.

Smiling always made people underestimate you.

“Peggy Carter?” The man wearing a suit with no tie questioned explosively. 

Peggy blinked in surprise. “I was hoping I wouldn’t be recognized.”

And that was when everything went black.

\--

“You shot her!” Coulson exclaimed. May sighed and holstered her weapon, Phil knew it was merely an icer but… but… but still. “You shot Peggy Carter.”

“Yes.” May’s tone of voice was unimpressed. She often was when Phil was at his most ‘fanboy’ (or so Skye, Daisy, DAISY) said. “Because we can’t be sure she is Peggy Carter.”

“Well, whoever she is,” Daisy carefully lifted Peggy’s head off the floor, “she’s going to have a hell of a headache.”

Phil winced. Then winced again when he realized that, Peggy or not, there was a nude woman in the middle of the hall and she likely wasn’t going to be terribly comfortable with all of them if she stayed nude. “Mack, get Simmons and make sure to bring a stretcher, Bobbi, can you find a…” he motioned towards Peggy, “a blanket or something?”

Bobbi smiled at him. “Sure, boss.”

Mack nodded and headed off to get Simmons which left May, Skye and Coulson with the unconscious Peggy in the middle of a hallway that generally saw a lot of foot traffic. It was just off of what Daisy had taken to calling ‘the common room’ the intercepting open space between all the hallways and offices. Phil had intercepted Mack and Bobbi there to make sure that the Secret Non-Denominational Holiday Exchange gifts had remained as secret as possible. 

Or, no, okay, he had been snooping. He had snooped because he was a spy (a good spy!) who wasn’t a fan of secrets. He and everyone at SHIELD had spent the holiday season both trying to find out who their SNDHE gift giver was, what they had been given and also attempting to keep their own gifts and identity secret. It had made for a light hearted change from all of the death and destruction that had been visited upon SHIELD and the world in the past… the past…

He rubbed at the back of his neck.

For a while, anyway.

“So,” May knelt at Carter’s side, “what are you thinking?”

She had likely catalogued all of the potential deviations that this Carter could have from the original. Phil didn’t feel comfortable looking anywhere but at the unconscious woman’s face which was lovely, unlined. A much younger Peggy Carter than he was used to seeing. If he had to place her, age wise, he would say she came from the period of time shortly after Captain America vanished into the ice. Perhaps she had even come from a time pre-SHIELD. That was, if she was Peggy Carter and not…

“Could be a clone.” Daisy suggested. “Wasn’t HYDRA into cloning?”

“None of their human cloning subjects survived long out of the cloning chamber.” Phil noted with a frown. “My first thought was time travel.”

May nodded. “That’s a possibility. She’s got the look of a woman from the 40s.” Skye and Phil both gave May a look. “It’s a distinctive time period.”

Simmons arrived ahead of the stretcher with a short, stifled squeal. “It’s her!” She gasped. “It’s really her! Or, maybe, maybe not really her, but possibly her it’s…” She grinned wide. “I might get to touch Peggy Carter with my own hands!”

“You could have touched her before this.” Phil said. “She’s still alive.”

He paused, glanced at May.

She nodded. “I’ll go check.”

Bobbi arrived with a blanket the same time the stretcher did and after they had placed her on the cart Phil carefully covered up one of his idols. Then he walked with Jemma and the stretcher down to the medical lab and had to peel himself away before he followed her inside. If he followed Simmons inside for the tests he wouldn’t want to leave. He had to leave. He had his own work to be done and, more importantly, he had a present for Fitz that he had kept carefully hidden for the past month that needed to be snuck under the non-denominational false fir in the common room.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when he arrived in his office to find a courier. The man was dressed in an expensive suit, he had ‘lawyer’ written all over him from his neatly parted hair to his shined shoes. Johnson, one of the younger agents, hovered in the background. “He insisted he bring this to you, sir.” Johnson said apologetically. “He has clearance…”

The laywer/messenger held out a hand with a smile. He had a package tucked under the other arm. “Solo,” he introduced himself, just his last name Coulson would guess, “I work with the Stark family trust.”

That got Coulson to raise his eyebrows.

“Well, that clears up how you have security clearance.” He shook Solo’s hand and motioned for the man to take a seat but the neatly coiffed lawyer shook his head and held out the package.

“Just need your thumbprint for this and I’ve got to get back to work. Package delivery specified keeping it a secret from the boss and while I doubt he cares too much about my whereabouts I’d rather not fail to fulfill Stark senior’s dying wishes.”

If Coulson had any more forehead (and he was self-conscious enough to know he had plenty) his eyebrows would have climbed even higher. “Well, I certainly won’t tell him.” He pressed his thumb to the sensor and, when it beeped green, took the package from Solos’ arms. “I’ll have Johnson show you out.”

Johnson nodded and didn’t so much hover as shift into the lawyer’s line of sight so that he was a constant reminder of the man’s need to leave. Solo didn’t look like he wanted to stick around at all, however, so with a brief nod both men were out of his office and out of his hair.

Which just left the package.

Coulson set the brown wrapped parcel on his desk with a frown. First Peggy Carter and now a mysterious package left for him by Howard Stark. Left for him or simply left? The keypad had been keyed to his thumbprint, which implied it was for him, but perhaps it was merely for a SHIELD agent and that was why his print had worked. There had been that information dump after HYDRA went down, anyone (presumably) could have gotten a hold of his fingerprints.

He pulled out his letter opener and carefully slid it into the folds of the packaging. With a few quick snips the paper came undone and neatly stacked (and tied together) file folders were unveiled.

“File folders?” He questioned aloud. He lifted the first one up and flipped it open.  
The tesseract stared back at him.

He flinched but didn’t… didn’t flip it closed immediately. Instead he pulled the tesseract to the side and studied Howard’s neatly printed handwriting. (A surprise, given Tony’s.)

It seemed that Howard had been studying the tesseract on, he checked the date, that exact day some odd years ago.

“Well that’s…” interesting.

He kept reading.

He was unsurprised when he reached the end and Howard’s neatly packed handwriting became panicked. It seemed Peggy Carter had been in the room for some of those tests and it seemed that Peggy Carter had disappeared, leaving behind a pile of her clothes, during those tests. Coulson flipped the file closed and stared at the pile. They seemed to have been organized chronologically. He sifted through and picked up the last folder. It was thinner than the rest and when he opened it up he saw way.

‘Phil, read from the beginning, it’s more of an adventure that way.

And stop worrying so much.

Love, Peggy’

Phil sighed and set the folder down.

Well, at least he knew now that Peggy Carter returned to her own timeline unharmed by anything that happened in the future. That was, possibly. He had never been terribly good at theoretical time travel. He’d barely scraped through that class at the academy by the skin of his teeth. 

“Phil,” May at the door with a serious expression on her face, although, when didn’t she look serious? “She’s awake.”

Phil blinked. “Has it really been that long? I thought I just came up here.”

And he hadn’t managed to place Fitz’s present under the tree. Damn.

\--

Coulson wasn’t surprised he had to shoo off a number of ‘completely innocent’ agents on his way into quarantine. After all, no one liked to gossip like a spy. (Being a spy was quite the conundrum, gossip and secrets ran hand in hand.) The fact that THE Peggy Carter may or may not have somehow ended up in their care, and that she might have started that way naked, had clearly made the rounds. He made a mental note to chastise somebody and headed in.

Jemma stood in a sea of white coated scientists. She looked good, better than she had in a while, though she still seemed to prefer to dress like any day could lead to combat or survival exercises. “How is she?” He asked.

Miss Carter (agent?) was sitting up inside of quarantine, someone had found her a set of sweats, he hoped they had included underwear along with it. Not that he’d ask. That’d be rude.

“Oh, she’s fine.” Jemma answered with a wave of her hand. “We’ll have to give her a few inoculations, you know, catch her up so she doesn’t catch anything nasty and bring it back to her original timeline… although I suppose that would change the timeline. We could just keep her in quarantine until we discover how to send her back.” She paused. “We can send her back, right? Or, should the question be will we send her back? Oooh are we in a timeloop or a separate timeline altogether?”

“That’s for you to help figure out.” Coulson certainly wanted no part in the theoretical discussions that were going to ignite. Maybe he could send Mack in, Mack was a relatively good geek to Phil translator, Daisy went off on tangents and May simply didn’t care. “And the team.”

He’d need to assign a team of scientists to work on this problem. One more item on his to-do list.

“Well,” Jemma heaved a sigh of relief, “as long as Fitz and I aren’t the only ones.” She smiled at Coulson, excited, eyes sparkling. “Can you believe it’s her?”

“Are we sure it is her?” Coulson asked skeptically. The dissonance of the woman in quarantine and the pictures Coulson had seen was… well, he supposed it wasn’t startling. She had the same face, even if her hair had fallen around her shoulders in a manner that suggested it had once been held up by pins but now the pins were all gone, and the same body type. She carried herself like a woman used to commanding others. It was just… odd to see a young Peggy Carter in a high tech sterile room when he was used to seeing her in grainy photographs of a bygone age. Now, add a few streaks to her hair and lines to her face and she looked very much like the Director Carter Coulson had just missed out on serving under.

Jemma handed him a folder full of biometric data. “Fingerprints are match, that was the first thing we did, her retinal scan checks out and her DNA results just came in as positive.” Simmons practically glowed. “It’s her.”

Coulson thought of the pile of files on his desk that needed reading. “Well, I guess we’d better,” Jemma hopped in place and Coulson cleared his throat, “I’d better…” Simmons slumped, “talk to her for a bit.” He paused. “Alone.”

“Alright, alright,” Simmons sighed, “but you need to be decontaminated first. You have no idea what from the 21st century could kill her.”

He took off his suit jacket and set it aside. The pants could survive, though the crease would not, but his jackets were always ruined by the decontamination sweep. “Better safe than sorry.”

He entered quarantine in stocking feet. 

“So,” Peggy, and he probably shouldn’t refer to her as Peggy in his head it was so informal, swept her hair over her shoulder with a frown, “are you the one in charge?”

Coulson nodded. “Director Phil Coulson.” He held his hand out to her.

“Are you sure you’re allowed to touch?” Peggy asked with a smile, but she shook his hand. “Everyone else was so careful to keep their gloves on.”

It was a nice, firm handshake, very professional. She probably had a lot of practice at making her handshakes just as firm and businesslike as the man next to her. “That was more for your sake than theirs, I promise.” He motioned back towards where he had come in. “They made sure I was clean before I came in.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. There was something about her… no, it was probably just him drawing connections between her and Rogers. Rogers hadn’t been like this the first day, Peggy had yet to make a break for the door, but then again maybe if they hadn’t lied to Rogers the first time around he would have been just as calm. 

“So,” Peggy’s eyebrows stayed raised, “this is the future.”

Ah.

“I thought you might figure it out.” He hadn’t wanted her to, of course, but there was no way to disguise the technology of the lab. They had no time to set up the kind of facsimile that Rogers had woken up in, and that hadn’t fooled him at all. She had already seen their facilities before they had seen her, while they could have stuck her in a room with little in it but bricks and mortar keeping her there would have been difficult. “Not that I was trying to hide it.”

“Obviously.” Peggy smiled at him, something sharp with teeth. “You didn’t even cover up the…” she motioned at the glass wall and the lab behind, “well, I’ll be honest, I’m not quite sure what all of those machines are.” Coulson turned to see the lab and the computer monitors that sparked with life, color, and scientific data. He was pretty sure he spotted someone playing Galaga in the corner, however, and he made a note to talk to them about it. 

“I’d tell you,” He said honestly, “but…”

Carter was already nodding. “The timeline, yes.” She frowned. “You know, I’ve had theoretical discussions about time travel but…” then she laughed, “this is a little stranger than I ever thought it would be.”

She’d had theoretical discussions about time travel? Coulson wasn’t sure what to do with this information. “That doesn’t really seem like something that would be up your alley.”

“And how would you know what’s up my alley?” Peggy’s voice was amused but the second after she spoke her eyes widened slightly, just a bit, just enough, and Coulson felt his cheeks turn hot.

“Let’s just say,” he cleared his throat, “that we have a file on you.” 

Peggy nodded, unsurprised. Given her work during the war it would have made sense for a great deal of government agencies to have a file on her and clearly, with their superior technology, accessing the file once they had ascertained her identity would be easy.

“Well.” She smacked her hands on her knees. It brought Coulson’s attention down to her legs, the sweatpants she wore were rolled up at the ankle, if Coulson was a betting man he would say they were Bobbi’s. This exposed Peggy’s feet, the only part of her anatomy Coulson wouldn’t deem elegant (because who could have elegant feet?) and her red toe nail polish. For some reason, Coulson found this charming. He snapped his gaze back up to her face quickly. “How do I get home?”

He cleared his throat. “We’re working on that.”

\--

Test one, failure.

Coulson skimmed through the folder after that. He appreciated that Howard Stark put ‘failure’ up front. Some of the data looked familiar, similar to the data that Doctor Foster had put together when studying the Einstein-Rosen Bridge which was similar to the report Fitz had filed on traveling by obelisk. It was crude, though, and the measurements were off. Clearly Howard hadn’t been working with nearly the same kind of technology, nor was he working in a sterile environment. 

Also, he was Howard Stark and Coulson had heard enough stories and read enough old mission reports to know what that meant.

He flipped the folder closer and moved onto the second one. He really should have just dumped these on Fitz and Simmons but he felt the need to be helpful.

Test two, failure.

Test three…

Test four…

Test sixteen…

“You really should hand those over to Fitz and Simmons.” May said. She was standing in front of his desk with her hands on her hips. It looked like she had been there a while.  
Coulson rubbed the side of his neck. “You couldn’t have knocked?”

“I did.” She retorted. She picked up the file he had been reading and flipped through it. Then she snorted. “Most of this is garbage.”

“He’s a Stark.” Coulson didn’t bother to take the file back. May flipped through the pages and examined the photographs. “They ramble.”

She handed the file folder back to him and simply… looked. May had a way of looking that made Coulson feel like he had been stripped down to, if not his bones, then at least his underwear. It was unnerving. It was also why they were friends. “You’re hiding.”

“I’m not…” he protested, cut himself off, evaluated the amount of bullshit May looked ready to deal with (she was somewhere around mid-level exasperation which meant he could dissemble a little bit) and shrugged. “I’m hiding a little. It’s intimidating.”

She’s intimidating.

“She’s just a woman.” May rolled her eyes.

“She’s…” Coulson pointed at the doorway in exasperation. “She’s Peggy Carter! Did you tell Simmons that she was just a-” May shot him a look, “Of course, you did.”

He sighed.

“She’s bored.” Was what May supplied. “Carter, not Simmons.”

“Of course she’s bored.” Phil sat down heavily and shuffled through the pile of folders. He was still tempted to read from the bottom up (it had to give him more context on how to get Carter back home) but the note from Peggy implied that reading from the bottom up wasn’t how he did things. It also implied that, if he followed through, their timeline was a closed loop and she would be eventually returned to her own timeline. “She’s in quarantine.” 

Daisy had been bored too. Being stuck behind glass while the world went on around you was unexciting. He bet that someone had thought to bring her a book. He thought about that, books would be dangerous, it would have needed to be a book published in the 40s without any signs of the passing time. So, unless you had a vintage novel lying around, books would be out. Simmons probably wouldn’t have allowed books in quarantine anyway. Cards, perhaps? But there were only so many rounds of solitaire that could be played before it got frustratingly boring. 

“You’re bored too.” May motioned to the file folders. “Send those to Fitz Simmons and make yourself useful.”

Then she left.

Coulson stared at the files and, after he had slipped the last one out, sent them down via courier. Then he spent time putting together a basket (he thought about a picnic, glanced at the time even, but he was sure they were feeding her just fine) of games. Checkers and chess would have been safe, he borrowed Mack’s travel set, he stopped by to visit Daisy and borrow a pack of cards, he also picked up a spare notebook (unlined, blank cover) and a pencil. She might as well chronicle her experience. Or write endless pages of ‘I am so bored’ like a highschool student trapped in detention.

Getting into quarantine took longer, Simmons did a thorough scan of each and every item in his basket before allowing him to pass through. He entered in his stocking feet once more.

Today Peggy wore a patterned pajama set, white with large yellow daisies, Coulson was relatively sure that Bobbi had planned to give it to Daisy for the exchange but her mind had apparently been changed. Or perhaps Daisy had thought that Peggy Carter wearing them was a higher cause. Her hair fell attractively around her face, a modern look compared to the vintage (to him, at least) style she had worn it in the day before. 

She noticed him looking.

“I can’t do a thing with it.” She stated ruefully. “Doctor Simmons suggested a shower and,” she shrugged, “well, I don’t have any of my equipment.”

“It suits you.” He said quickly, too quickly from the look she wore. He held up the basket. “Checkers?”

“Please.” She responded, too quickly, just like him, but she covered it up with a smile. “I’m horrendously bored.”

He set the travel set on a little wheely table and rolled it to her bedside. She sat up eagerly and reached for black. “I have to warn you,” she stated as she dropped the disks down on the board, “I will trounce you.”

“Here I thought checkers would be safer than chess.” He laid out his own side.

“Draughts is,” she checked herself, “checkers is fine.” She pushed a piece forward with a smile. “Brings back good memories.”

“Distant ones?” He shifted a piece and checked her gaze. She didn’t look up from the board as she played which gave him a chance to study her. She still seemed so young to him. Not nearly the weathered spy she would later become. Still, there was that edge of sadness, of loss, that came with losing loved ones. It could have been there before the war, it might have more to do with friends and comrades, but seeing it so clearly on her face reminded him of his own losses. 

“No,” she sighed and looked up at him from under her lashes, catching him studying her, “but I thought you said you had a file on me.”

“They don’t talk about your skill at ‘draughts’.” She jumped him and he frowned. He saw a strategy forming, or so he thought, the game was early and reading a checkers board was actually more difficult than chess. “Though I’m sure there are diaries somewhere that do.”

“Oh, yes,” she responded with a laugh, “those boys were fastidious about their diaries.” She paused. “Not, of course, that any of them would admit it. Most claimed to be writing letters to their sweethearts, even when they didn’t have any.”

The game did not last as long as Coulson had hoped it would. He did, indeed, find himself soundly trounced. 

“I have cards.” Coulson said afterwards. “And I do know of your reputation regarding poker.”  
Her smile was cardshark sharp. “It’s nice to see some of my exploits made it to the future.”

“More than you think.” He answered as he began dealing cards for gin. “You’re…”

He stopped.

He had to stop thinking of this as similar to Rogers. Rogers, there was no hope (if they figure out how to send Peggy back, should they offer it to…?) while Peggy’s letter showed it was a closed loop. Or so he hoped. He hoped that the scientists could make more sense of it than he could.

Peggy’s smile was off-kilter now. “You’re very bad at keeping secrets, for a spy.”

“You’re very good at wheedling them out of me.” Coulson replied. “You probably make an excellent interrogator.” Which was not a skill that Carter had ever really pursued.

“Only if they let me play rummy as I grill them.” She examined her cards with a smile. “Thank you, Phil. For keeping me company.”

“I’ll thank you,” Phil replied, “for going easy on me.”

She eyed him over the edge of her cards. “Not on your life.”

\--

Peggy wasn’t sure what to think about Director Phil Coulson. He visited her regularly, once a day for the past… she supposed it must be four days she had been in quarantine. She would have thought that the director of SHIELD would have had more important things to do than to waste time with her. Still, he claimed to delegate and she wasn’t, in truth, terribly sure what SHIELD did. After all, all she had seen was a few spare hallways and the labs. Perhaps SHIELD was some kind of laboratory, now, or… or…

She sighed.

“Looks like I arrived right on time.” Coulson wore shoes for the first time and he rolled a piece of luggage behind him. Over his arm was a bag made of white material. “And with good news.”

“I’ve been dying for good news since 1939.” Peggy stated baldly, she ignored the way it made Coulson wince. “What is it?”

She hoped the bags contained clothes for her. While she did not mind dressing in the utterly comfortable outfits provided by the girls (so far, primarily Bobbi, although Simmons had donated a fetching ensemble in her school colors the day before) but they made her feel very under-dressed. She was dying for a pair of pumps and a skirt, oddly enough. And, oh, lipstick, she was sure she would happily murder a man for a tube of lipstick. Still, so many of the girls wore little or none (she hadn’t seen her shade on any of their mouths) that Peggy hadn’t had the heart to ask. Perhaps that was the future of fashion, understated and underdressed.

“The good doctors say you are free to enter the outside world.” Coulson set the bag across the bed and swung his wheeled luggage her way. “And they have pinned down a date for your return voyage.”

That has her surprised. She paused in her reach for the bag. “They have?”

“Christmas Eve.” Coulson’s smile seemed slightly forced.

“A Christmas miracle.” She had never put much stock in miracles, science however, that she could trust. This futuristic science… well, she supposed she could be as brave as Steve. He put himself in Howard’s hands, Simmons at least seemed to be reasonably well informed. “Well, that’s not too far off-”

“Of next year.” Coulson added, which, well, he could certainly have led with that. Peggy frowned.

“…ah, I see.” A little over a year before she’d be back home. She supposed she could think of it as a kind of vacation, there was no way she was qualified to do any kind of work in the modern world. And if she was Coulson, which she wasn’t, she would keep her… oh, this was confusing. She was sure she would be kept under SHIELD’s eye, if not under their lock and key. “And will time have passed back home?”

Phil glanced at the zipped up bag before he looked back to her. “In a way. We know that only seven and a half months pass between your disappearance and your return. The data on how long it is going to take to open up a portal is a bit beyond me, to be honest, but it seems like people on both sides need to be working on the problem and a lot of it is very complicated mathematics.”

At least she knew Howard was working on the problem.

Coulson glanced at the bag again and his fingers twitched. She took pity on him and undid the zipper. Inside was a beautiful dress in red. For a dress from the future it was very similar to one she had in her closet back home. Oh, it wasn’t quite right, but it was close enough. “This is very nice?”

She didn’t mean to sound questioning.

“Think of it,” he paused, motioned to the rolling luggage, “of all this as an early Christmas present.” He smiled at her, a titch shy. “And since you’ll be with us for at least a little while, and Simmons has given you the all clear, I thought you might like to see a little bit of the modern world.”

“Not too much.” She bit back a teasing smile. “I think I’d like that.”

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought that Coulson might have blushed, just a little bit, a slight redness at the tip of his nose. If it was true, she was touched.

“I.” He paused. “Ms. Carter,” and oh, she wished she could insist he call her agent, she did so prefer that, but at the same time she wasn’t one of his agents, “I would like to take you to dinner, if you…” he trailed off.

“Are you always so uncertain?”

It reminded her of…

No.

She cut that train of thought off.

“I’d love to go to dinner with you, Phil.” She stressed his first name. “But first, I’m afraid, I’m going to have to change.”

He exited quickly enough which left her with the particular problem of figuring out what to wear. She peeked and besides the red dress there was a navy blue one, she was grateful he hadn’t completed the color scheme and included white. She took the luggage and there were-

“Oh thank god.”

Hair products! And more, shirts and the god-awful pants that everyone seemed to wear now, skirts, and one suit coat. None of it was quite right, the cut, the color, the fabric content, it was all just a little bit off from what she was used to. It was close enough, and the similarities just made the differences jarring to her. She took the dress and the rolling luggage into the small bathroom she was allowed and set about making herself presentable. 

It took longer than she would have liked and in the end she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about herself.  
She looked… she looked nice. She certainly wouldn’t have given herself a second glance at a nice restaurant but she felt… out of place. Everything felt different. 

She laughed when she saw Phil Coulson, director of SHIELD, waiting nervously for her. She knew from the amused looks that Simmons gave him he had been there a while; she would bet anything he had been fretting. He was dressed, well, he was dressed as close to a man of her time as she supposed these futuristic slobs (that was rude of her) could get. Coulson startled at her laugh, he straightened and he gave her the appreciative attention of a man who liked what he saw but respected her as a person.

She missed that.

“Director.” 

He held up a hand, the one he wore covered in black (and she was itching to ask about that) and shook his head. “Phil, please, even out of quarantine.”

“Well,” Peggy took his arm, “I hadn’t planned to completely change my tune. Now,” she ignored the looks they received from the scientists who were only pretending to bustle busily around, “where did you plan on taking me?”

\--

Coulson tried to ignore the look on her face as they walked through the brilliantly lit streets. He couldn’t, he kept glancing to look at her face. Carter’s eyes were wide and she seemed to want to take in everything. He worried, of course, that he shouldn’t have brought her out, that it would screw things up. But then he thought of the folder that Fitz had returned to him (‘It’s, uh, for you and uh, private.’) and the contents. So he knew that, despite his worries (and Mack’s and Daisy’s worries) that spending time with her wouldn’t disrupt the timeline. It merely completed the loop. 

He hoped.

“You look worried again.” Peggy said low, she had kept her arm in his as they left SHIELD headquarters but after they stepped out of the car she hadn’t picked it up again. For such a short period of touch he missed it.

“I’m thinking about the timeline again.” He motioned to his head. “Worrying is a bad habit. Probably why I’m going bald.”

She smiled at his motion and his head. “I see nothing wrong with your hairline, Phil. Now, where is this restaurant you were promising me?” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I’m starving.”

“I love a woman with a good appetite.” He placed a hand on the small of her back, he was grateful once again for the mild winter that made anything more than a thin coat too much. She felt warm through the fabric. “It’s right here.”

He led her to a cheery little mom and pop Italian restaurant. Italian might not have been his favorite (burgers were, but burgers on a date now carried bad memories instead of good) but he had been there enough times and Daisy had recommended it as a perfect date site. (He had manfully reined in the urge to question her about it.) A hostess had them seated promptly with menus in their hands. The ambiance was dim, comfortable, with low lighting and cheery little chianti candles at the table.

“I have to admit,” Peggy’s eyes scanned the menu, “while all of this sounds familiar…” she glanced at him over the edge of the menu, “it’s been a long time since I was on a date.”

It surprised a laugh out of him.

“Well,” he closed his menu, he knew already what he wanted, “I’m not sure we should count this as one.”

 

She shook her head slightly, the light of the candle caught on earrings Coulson hadn’t noticed before. “I suppose it is true, romance is dead.”

He… couldn’t quite laugh at that and she must have seen it on his face. Peggy set her own menu aside and reached across the table for his hand. His cybernetic hand. He did his best not to wince away from her touch.

“New wounds?” She questioned.

“And old.” He sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“Mine isn’t.” She responded easily. She squeezed his hand, then glanced at it in surprise. He was sure it was the first time she’d had extensive contact with it. Peggy recovered quickly enough and with a firm pat on the back withdrew her touch. “My last boyfriend flew a plane into the ocean.”

He choked.

“Yes, uh,” he cleared his throat and poured some water into a glass, he noted a waiter heading hurriedly their way, “I… I’d heard.”

Ordering went fairly quickly and the inquisitive look on Peggy’s face at his response passed. Talk turned lighter, to the safe teasing topic of SHIELD employees. Since it was all they had in common, all that was safe to discuss (Phil couldn’t be sure if discussing the past would touch on a topic she shouldn’t know about yet and while he would love to warn her about HYDRA’s infiltration, or about any of the troubles she would come up against he knew he couldn’t) it continued through dinner. Phil encouraged the teasing comments about Bobbi and Hunter, Fitz and Simmons, the scientists whose names passed through Phil’s mind and his desk and he could, if he tried, remember their faces (hazily).

She teased him about that afterwards.

They ended dinner with another walk, the long way around back to SHIELD.

“Do you live…” she paused to admire a storefront, he paused too, he wondered if she would go back to the past with a taste for modern fashion, “‘on campus’, I suppose.”

“On,” He paused, oh, of course, “no, most of us don’t. There’s a contingent that stays overnight but…” he paused, “are you not comfortable sleeping there?”

He should have thought about that but… well, he hadn’t really expected her arrival. He was still playing catchup. She would be with them for a year, though, so he should look into alternatives. Would she want to take an apartment? A roommate? Perhaps he could broach the idea to Daisy… no. Probably not. Simmons was equally out and May… 

Well, there were other agents. Or there was a single.

(Or there was him.)

“I’m comfortable with it.” She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh. “Although your beds are too soft.”

He laughed.

“Well, I’d invite you to sleep on my couch, which isn’t, but I’m not so sure that would be proper.” He glanced at her reflection in the shop window. He was pleased to see that she appeared to be considering it.

“Not tonight.” She said, however, and turned to him with a smile. “But we do have a few more, before I have to go.”

A doomed romance, he thought, doomed from the start, but they both knew it going in and… “I guess I don’t even have to ask if this relationship will have strings.”

Peggy laughed at that and turned towards the base. “Phil, by the time strings on this relationship are born I’ll probably be dead.”

He didn’t correct her on that assumption, he was too busy thinking about the possibility of another date.

No strings attached.


End file.
